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It’s been nearly ten years since “Charlotte’s Troubles” (2015) was released.Directors Yan Fei and Peng Damo, starring Shen Teng and Ma Li reunite to bring the new work "Catching" from the "Xihong City Universe"baby"On July 13, the first day of preview screenings, the box office reached 156 million yuan, and the box office on that day exceeded 300 million yuan, which changed the cold situation in the early stage of the summer season."The Savior"。

It is similar to "Charlotte's Troubles" where she travels back to her youth to restart her life, and "The Richest Man in Xihong City" where she spends 1 billion yuan in a month."Catch the Doll" continues to play with high concepts and stage a parenting version of "The Truman Show"In order to train "successors", the super "rich dad" Ma Chenggang has opened up a new track for raising children in poverty in slums.

The two directors spent nearly ten years polishing the script with great care. The "Shen Ma" combination has a tacit understanding. The film is full of jokes and gags, but there is also touching truth and thinking about reality. Although some satires and reflections are just a little bit, they are terrifying when you think about them carefully.It is a comedy that is very suitable for East Asian babies.

"Catching Dolls" is a new work in the "Xihong City Universe" series directed by Yan Fei and Peng Damo. It tells the story of Xihong City tycoon Ma Chenggang, who, after his eldest son was spoiled, devoted himself to training his youngest son Ma Jiye. For this reason, he and his wife Chunlan moved into the slums and used the method of raising their children in poverty to encourage their children to work hard and get into Tsinghua University and Peking University.

The film is a slow and steady work that takes time and effort. The inspiration for the film came in 2015. Peng Damo said, "When Charlotte's Troubles was released, I heard an interesting story on the radio. A couple in Shenyang told their child that his family was very well off after he graduated from college. We thought this was a very interesting and feasible thing to do."

But we didn't expect that it would take us nearly ten years to do it, "because when we were constructing the story, it always didn't work. It wasn't until we became parents and watched our children grow up, and in the process of battling wits and courage with our children every day, that we slowly pieced this story together," said Peng Damu.

The Xihong City series of films are like a series of imaginative wealth experiments."Charlotte's Troubles" allows the frustrated middle-aged Charlotte to restart her life through time travel. When all the regrets of youth are made up, and money, fame and beauty are in hand, can she live a good life?

"The Richest Man in Xihong City" uses a bizarre money game setting in which the suddenly wealthy Wang Duoyu has to spend 1 billion yuan within a month to test the magic of money and the bottom line of human nature.

Compared with the two previous works, "Catching Dolls" is much more down-to-earth in its approach to family education.Its sense of humor and absurdity mainly comes from the contrast brought about by the deliberate inversion of poverty and wealth.Ma Jiye’s impoverished living environment is actually a “chicken baby theme park” built by his parents at great expense.

Hidden in the dilapidated and leaky living room is a secret room leading to the "Successor Program Command Center", where there are a large team of teachers, security and logistics;

Neighbors in the compound are always available to help consolidate knowledge of various subjects. When going out, you can meet foreigners to practice speaking with you. The grandmother who has been paralyzed in bed for many years is actually a hired education expert.

Ma Chenggang and Chunlan wore old clothes and worn-out shoes in front of their children, but then they turned around and had luxury cars, villas, Cohiba cigars, and "Hermes Kelly orange lychee leather".

As the child grows up and various unexpected events occur,This parenting version of "The Truman Show" could be exposed at any time, and requires all kinds of battles of wits and courage, making up for it everywhere, and competing in acting skills, thus maximizing the comedy effect.

That year, "Charlotte's Troubles" not only made the Happy Twist team a new force in the domestic comedy film market, but alsoShen Teng and Ma Li have become a comedy CP with great national favorability.

The two have collaborated for many years in dramas, movies and the Spring Festival Gala stage and have a great understanding of each other. Ma Li's absence from "The Richest Man in Xihong City" also made many viewers feel regretful. The only feature film they have collaborated on in recent years is "The Lone Moon", and they do not have many scenes together.

This time they join hands again to play a loving remarried couple in "Catching Dolls".The box office performance once again proved how popular this powerful duo is like the national treasure giant pandas.

In the film, the two people's coordination from eye contact to body movements is smooth and tacit., especially the scene where the couple goes out in a luxury car and is afraid of being discovered by their son, so they look back from time to time. They both appear in cool cotton-padded jackets, walking in unison, and even a fallen leaf that suddenly breaks in cannot break their rhythm and their aura like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Their every move is full of the charm of comedy.

Chunlan, played by Ma Li, is a noble lady, much more delicate and charming than Dongmei in "Charlotte's Troubles". Her skin is shiny and smooth even in a shabby room.

As the second wife of the wealthy Ma Chenggang, Chunlan often does not have the same say as her husband, and her love for her children is more instinctive and less purposeful.While delivering the comedic punchline, Ma Li also presented the character's subtle complexity and touching motherhood.

Especially in a scene where Ma Chenggang recalls his hardships, the two of them sang in unison, and Ma Li supported him in every word, praising him for "only those who endure hardships can become the best", cleverly reflecting her family status in a humorous way.

She didn't want to live a hard life with her child, but in order for her son to become the "successor" of the family business, she accepted her husband's plan to raise him in poverty. Many times, she showed her love for her child from the bottom of her heart, not just for the sake of making fun of him.

Especially when his son learned the truth and questioned his parents, "Who are the two teachers you are?" Ma Chenggang frantically defended himself, while Chunlan, who followed behind him, said nothing. However, the audience could empathize with her heartache for her child and her fear of losing him, so she was the one who let go of her son in the end.

Although "chicken baby" is a subject that can easily resonate with the audience, it is not easy to handle it properly and strike a balance between comedy effects and values.

The "scumbag" physique in "Charlotte's Troubles" that cannot be saved even by time travel and the stereotyped and empty presentation of the wonders of money in "The Richest Man in Xihong City" have both caused controversy."Catching Dolls" is also a film that is full of minefields. It is not easy for it to pass smoothly against the backdrop of current class differentiation and explosive public opinion environment.

The wealthy couple Ma Chenggang and Chunlan pretend to be poor, saying one thing in front of their son and another behind his back. Why is it just funny and not offensive?

In the film, although wealth has created a powerful "situational teaching" environment for raising children, it cannot take shortcuts and make things easy. Instead, in order to maintain this lie, they are struggling and embarrassed everywhere. Ma Chenggang and his wife face all kinds of parenting anxieties and powerlessness like ordinary parents.

In addition, apart from showing off his wealth in front of Mr. Jia (Jia Bing) who came to help with the poverty alleviation, Ma Chenggang and Chunlan are low-key most of the time and treat their subordinates with humanity. When the driver hit his head while trying to be cool while getting in the car, Ma Chenggang drove the car himself. These details make Ma Chenggang less offensive.

In terms of being a father, Ma Chenggang actually has a lot of complaintsAfter he had spoiled his eldest son Ma Dajun, he treated him like an abandoned child. In order to fully cultivate the new "younger one", he completely erased Dajun's existence in the family, so that he could only call his father "Lao Ma" in front of his younger brother.

He controlled Ma Jiye's life even more tightly, with surveillance and indoctrination everywhere. When he wanted his son to give up long-distance running, he even set up a trap to create the illusion that "it's not that I don't allow you to do it, but you can't do it", completely disregarding the harm to his son.

When the truth was finally revealed, he still made a sophistry argument, "You think we control your life? You also control our lives!"

Thanks to Shen Teng's own affinity with the audience, the daddy vibe of this authoritarian patriarchal character is somewhat diluted.

In addition, the film also shows how a seemingly strong and all-powerful father humbly and eagerly wants to get a little love response from his children. When Ma Chenggang was looking forward to his son, who had mastered the financial power of the family, buying him a new pair of shoes, his son secretly bought a tablet computer to play with. At that moment, Ma Chenggang was really broken.

The plot of "Catch the Doll" is absurd, but the emotions are real, and all the cast members performed very well. The grandma and grandpa are close relatives, and it is hard to guard against giving pocket money to their grandchildren. The education expert played by Sarina is not a real grandmother but is better than a real grandmother. She is reluctant to give up her inheritance at the funeral, and the scene where she can't help but "resurrect from the dead" makes people laugh and cry and is very contagious.

In the film, Ma Jiye finally pushed open the heavy iron fence, passed through the long basement passage, and escaped from the life designed by his parents. When the door opened, a group of children were playing in the shallow pond outside, surrounded by sunlight and warm filters, beautiful as a dream.That was the free, happy, and uncertain childhood he missed.

Just like in "Lolita", when Humbert was waiting on the hillside for the police to arrest him, he heard the sound of children playing coming from the bottom of the hill, but Lolita's voice "was not in that harmony", and he finally realized that this was a "sad and desperate thing."

But for the sake of comedy, the lies and control of parents that harm their children are treated with respect in "Catch the Doll", and reconciliation is achieved in the blink of an eye., only in the post-credits scene, a detail in which Ma Jiye subconsciously picked up mineral water bottles while running a marathon was used to show the shadow left on him by his hard-working education.

Ma Jiye was admitted to his favorite sports university with a score high enough to get into Peking University or Tsinghua University. In reality, children of wealthy people can be admitted to Peking University as sports students. Ma Chenggang from the "Xihong City Universe" must have never heard of this track, otherwise he wouldn't have put so much effort into turning his child into a slum test-taker.

And on another level of reality, how many people are willing to have a "dream" like Ma Jiye, and are willing to wake up one day after experiencing the hardships of life and hear their parents say "Stop pretending, let's get down to business."

What kind of life do you want to live? To be free to forge your own path, or to take over the baton under the protection of your parents?

The reality is that many people have no choice.

This is the biggest absurdity of "Catching Dolls". The satire and criticism in the play are just right, but it forms a kind of magical reflection relationship with reality, and has a kind of ironic power that is terrifying when you think about it carefully.